There was an extra episode of Seinfeld Season 6.
Recently, various lots of NBC merchandise and memorabilia were sold off due to the liquidation of a studio lot, and one contained the original reels of the entire series of Seinfeld. These were purchased for a large sum by a Seinfeld collector at auction, to the tune of $30,500.
These reels were indeed complete- to the point of containing 3 unaired episodes of the series, scrapped last second. These line up with offhand comments in interviews about a "very strange" episode of Seinfeld scrapped from Season 6 due to NBC's concerns it could alienate their audience- as one of the 3 reels was from the Season 6 bin.
The other 2 episodes- for seasons 4 and 7- were unremarkable, and shelved due to inconvenient episode timing- a building exploding around the time an episode named “The Savior” was meant to air featuring George saving a man from an unrelated exploding building- and a guest star's unfortunate passing- Dean Martin was meant to be in an episode titled “The Crooner” but died before his role was finished, so the reel was left unfinished.
However, the third, titled "The Mason," was bizarre and completely uncharacteristic of the series. This is- more likely than not- the discussed episode.
Thankfully, this collector uploaded the episode to archive.org after some copyright problems with NBC attempting to upload to YouTube. The following is a description of the episode.
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The episode opens, quite unusually for late-series Seinfeld, with one of Jerry’s stand-up routines. The crowd is thinner than most episodes, though, and Jerry is visibly somewhat nervous.
“Hey, you can’t help but notice all the famous people dyin’ in the last few years, right?” he asks, to 2 or 3 people responding affirmatively from the crowd. He continues, “I mean, what, you got John Candy, Chris Farley, Andre the Giant… you ever wonder if whatever secret cabal runs the government is just killin’ the guys you like?”
A terse laugh emanates from the audience and Jerry half-heartedly says, in a faux-deep voice, “He’s watching a lot of Goodfellas! Snipe Henny Youngman!” Several more light, uncomfortable chuckles are heard and the reel briefly flashes black before cutting to a shot of Jerry in his apartment, before Kramer busts down the door, yelling “JERRY!” in a legitimately panicked manner. Light laughter is heard from the crowd.
“What?” Jerry asks, curtly.
“There was an explosion at the Pentagon! The President is in critical condition!”
All crowd noise stops. It’s dead quiet.
“That’s a shame,” Jerry dismissively responds, as he frequently does. Kramer scoffs and leaves, clearly distressed.
As soon as Kramer leaves, Jerry’s face quickly forms into one of horror. “Shit, shit, shit,” he swears (notably uncensored), scrambling to his room. He pulls a book out of a bookshelf and the whole thing swivels away to reveal a giant doorway with a set of stairs. He turns to the camera, saying, “I feel like Batman when he needs to use the john at a party.” Light laughter is heard again, only this time seeming more forced and unnatural.
He runs down the stairs for 10 full seconds, before the footage catches on a loop and cuts to Jerry donning a black cloak and running to a large area presumably in the basement of his home, with a large, painted red pentagram on the floor. He produces and uses a razor and fake blood begins to ooze from his wrists, mixing with the paint on the pentagram.
He kneels down in a “praying” position, the blood staining various parts of his robe as he speaks to an offscreen presence.
“The leader’s down. Leader of the Masons, the whole operation, knocked out. I have no idea what to do, please, help me,” he began, before coughing and choking out something that sounded vaguely like a name.
A short pause. “Yes, I know,” Jerry says. A longer pause. “I couldn’t possibly do that!”
The room shakes violently until eventually the camera falls off its tripod. A person- presumably camera tech for the show, reaches for it, but a hand pulls them back, letting the camera stay in its tipped-over position.
“If… if I have to,” Jerry eventually says, reluctant. “To retain the power.”
The reel once again flashes, similar to previous, and it cuts to George and Elaine conversing in a diner.
“Haven’t seen Jerry around recently, have you?” Elaine asks, and George shakes his head quickly.
“That’s strange,” Elaine continues. “He left right around the time the Pentagon blew up. I never took him to be so affected by tragedy at a national level. Always thought he was sort of a catharsis guy.”
George is silent, but some nervous laughs are heard.
“I’m going back to his apartment,” Elaine says, and George nods, still silent as he gathers his things to leave with Elaine.
One last cut.
George and Elaine enter Jerry’s room and notice the large, open door. They walk downstairs, taking much shorter time, and both gasp as they see what’s before them.
Jerry’s body is lying, twitching on the floor- obviously still alive but not for much longer. He’s laying flat on the pentagram in a pose similar to Michaelangelo’s David, arms and legs spread like in jumping jacks. A pool of blood is coagulating around his wrists and he’s foaming at the mouth- obviously not too convincingly, but enough where if you’d squint, it’d look real.
Elaine gags and George full-on vomits, but it’s hidden behind a convenient nearby trashcan, and both of them stumble up the stairs, falling halfway through. George falls over, smacking his face on the stairs, and the video zooms in on his now-bloodied mouth.
The video immediately cuts back to Jerry, performing for a now-empty crowd. “...and that’s how I’d probably go out if the cabal targeted me,” he finishes.
The camera slowly turns around and reveals exactly one person in the audience- a heavy-set figure in a dark turquoise cloak with what appear to be prop antlers jutting out of holes in its hood. It slowly claps, and this is present for the remainder of the tape, never looping, until it abruptly burns away.
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Most of the cast members of the episode were unable to be reached for comment but Jerry Seinfeld himself gave a short email reply to the original collector, explaining some circumstances. It reads as follows.
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Wow, we’ve got ourselves a collector!
On a more serious note, that episode was made during a strange time at ABC, as I recall, and for me too.
A new director had just come onto the show and he had this big box of notes and ideas- I remember specifically that he told me that he was holding onto them for a sadly deceased friend, but decided to adapt some of them in his friend’s memory. Very sweet thought, but his friend apparently had some kind of weird obsession because all of their scripts were really freaky and occult and kept bringing up the Freemasons. Larry {David} and I kinda felt bad for the kid, so we filmed this episode from the box, but it just felt weird and too out-there for Seinfeld, even as a fantasy sequence, so we told him we were gonna air it eventually but just shelved it forever and then eventually he got laid off and replaced by Andy Ackerman. I don’t think the newbie found out that we never ran the episode, which is good. That fear and anxiety you see in me was mostly just me not being sure of how in the hell I was gonna deliver these lines, or do some of those future scenes.
One last thing- I don’t remember that shot of the guy in the cloak you mentioned at all- as I remember it, the episode ended in complete silence with nobody in the crowd (another weird quirk of the script)- but either way, I hope I helped.
- Jerry
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There were no credits anywhere on the tape, or in the episode itself.
There are no records of anyone with a build similar to that of the figure in the cloak being present during filming of any Season 6 episode of Seinfeld, and no record in any of the liquidated ABC lots of any kind of dark turquoise cloak or prop antlers.
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Author's Notes:
This was my most recent story as of creating this website and I quite like where I took it.
As you can tell, I've done a lot of these retakes, and what I try to do is make the original themes of a particular story obvious while also creating new circumstances for them.
In my opinion, the original's future-prediction schtick is hokey and I hate the usage of 9/11 for shock value, and the Barack Obama poster? Don't get me started on that. But I did like the idea of a cult-themed episode, and especially some kind of lore surrounding the Freemasons, so I took it from there.
I don't know how Jerry Seinfeld would email someone so that part probably sucks but other than that I'm really proud of this one- one of my favorite pieces.
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